Painful as it doubtlessly is to be caught within a decaying
research program some profit may be gained by reflecting on the situation,
refusing an immediate shift to some more promising enterprise. There is a
powerful tendency to set up and conform to international standards and
philosophical reaction is instinctively defined in contraposition to the path
progress is taking. We do, however, at the same time know better than
that.Reverse movements are more adequately regarded as components of a multiple
interplay of possible directions. There cannot, in my eyes, be any doubt about
the blatant insufficiency of most neo-conservative attempts to deal with the
complexities of the present situation. But employing the by now outworn
scientific jargon of the original Vienna Circle is just as ill-conceived. If
this is conceded the problem can tentatively be approached in a new way,
allowing a legitimate place for the anxieties expressed by nostalgic schemes. 
By acknowledging that its own foundations rest on certain exclusions analytic
philosophy has begun to respond to the challenge of contemporary thought. It
was E.Heintel's view that only within the framework of his
Fundamentalphilosophie analytic philosophy can be
,,more ... than the self-contained game of an arrogant
and more or less esoterical sect.
Such
obvious blunders make it temptingly easy to turn the table on him and brand him
a diehard sectarian himself. But this would amount to a continuation of this
increasingly pointless game of name-calling. I am not driving at a
compromise-solution either. Dialectical relationships between progress and
reaction, modernity and post-modernism etc. seem much too simple to allow any
confidence in long term judgement. What we are called upon is to search for new
methods of making sense of the asynchronicity increasingly obvious behind the
veneer of one common standard of development. If this sounds like easy
relativism my answer is that facing relativity and not losing all of one's
historically valid criteria is just the kind of hard work philosophy is called
upon to perform.
How do our previous considerations touch upon these issues?
Viennese philosophy seems to be caught between bye-gone glory and present
malaise. The first thing to notice about this is that this state is neither
recent nor specific to philosophy but rather a mark of 20th-century Austrian
culture generally. As B.McGuinness remarks on the subversive effect of one of
Karl Kraus' pieces ,,There is something Austrian about the fact
that this bitter
satire on the official propaganda was commonly carried by officers at the
front, while British officers were satisfied with broadsheets reprinting pieces
by Dickens, Macaulay, Shakespeare, and Scott. The Austrians were called upon to
show courage without confidence in the value, let alone the success, of their
cause.''
It would be short-sighted to regard this only as a loser's stoicism.
The paradoxical logic of the saying ,,You do not have any chance
- use it'' falls outside the scope of ordinary success-stories
but carries a certain conviction
(and even efficiency) nevertheless. The ambivalence of wanting to promote
something that is beyond promotion is a feature of self-consciously being out
of step with the general drift of political and economic affairs. And this is
perhaps the best one can do in an environment that is rapidly destroying the
familiar conditions of life. J.Nestroy, F.Grillparzer, K.Kraus, R.Musil and the
later Wittgenstein are examples of this attitude, Herzmanovsy-Orlando,
Th.Bernhard and P.Handke being more recent practitioners of this art. In order
to appreciate their work one must be prepared to accept the progressive force
of regressive phantasies. Inability to transform a given set of cultural
dispositions into an easily applicable program for contemporary use is not in
itself an indication of failure, neither is it restricted to a few hold-outs of
unenlightened provincials. There is no guarantee that internationalism is
always on the right track. Stepping out of the grip of a certain view of
history allows one to regard inflexibility and even outright resistance to
change as mark of an excessive demand made on an established way of life. I
hasten to add that it does not follow that endangered pockets of resistance
should be conserved by any means. Turning old habits into museum-pieces is no
solution to the problem. My point is rather that the present state of
philosophy demands that we pay attention not only to the unquestionable
success-story of analytic philosophy but also to its hidden background and to
the abortive attempts to protect oneself against it. Including the losers in
one's historical narratives should not be restricted to cases of their
belonging to the appropriate persuasion.
Another way to approach the same issue
is to consider it within the framework of center and periphery F.Wimmer has
proposed to apply to the description of 19th-century Austrian philosophy as
well as to contemporary philosophy in Third World countries.
His comparison
does not only bring out diachronic structural similarities between areas not
occupying a central position in a given hegemonical setting, it also serves to
remind us of the problematic nature of this setting itself. The course I have
been tracing in this paper can be compared to the emergence of a developing
country into the status of the most developed ones, followed by a relapse into
renewed dependency. If it is conceded that in philosophy and in the study of
international relations likewise simplistic notions about the unidirectionality
and linearity of progress are no longer feasible the perplexity arising from
belonging to a marginal tradition is in itself a possible starting point. It
is, as I have tried to indicate, not just a matter of polemics between
quarreling academics, but an opportunity to devise a new attitude towards
deeply entrenched patterns of cultural hegemony established during the post-war
years.
It happens that the development of Anglo-American analytic philosophy is approaching closure just as the political and economical predominance of the US is in decline. Revived in Paris, Todtnauberg is very much in fashion again, no occasion to be particularly confident in the reign of Reason in History. But this is precisely the lesson to learn from the backward attempts to reinstall philosophia perennis where it was most fiercely attacked: retreating into metaphysics is not just a helplessly defensive move of a group of philosophers surpassed by modern times. It is -at the same time - an indication of the limits of a linear conception of history. In the context of his investigations on marginalized groups F.Wimmer coins the pertinent slogan of the need to reveal the ,,exoticism of majorities''. To proceed along these lines is to ask what has been endangered by their unquestionable and hence unquestioned dominance. If this century's philosophical geography is to overcome its own centralistic tendencies the ill-fated double of the Vienna Circle , the Vienna Roundabout, might serve as a place of transfer.